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Final details of Washington Township teachers contract settled

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Nearly 200 people rallied in support of the Washington Township Education Association's ongoing contract dispute before the Washington Township Board of Education's public hearing on the budget,Wednesday,March 27, 2013. (Staff Photo by Joe Warner/South Jersey Times)

Board of Education President Kurt Snyder said that the two parties finally agreed to the details of the contract's salary guide just before 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night. The two parties met to hash out details that were left undecided when they settled the overall contract in the early hours of April 24. Among them was the oft-debated salary guide and its "bubbles," or large annual salary increases teachers received after working in the district for a certain number of years. Figuring out those details led to hours of even more negotiations after the initial settlement, and threatened to delay the ratification of the contract even further.

While Snyder couldn't discuss the details yet, he said they "broke the bubble" by adding steps in the guide and raised the starting salary for new teachers.

The board's negotiations committee, union leaders and their negotiators informally settled on the overall terms of the contract, which expired on June 30, 2010, at 3:30 a.m. on April 24, after hours of negotiations. Since both parties signed off on the nitty-gritty details of the contract on Tuesday night, it will now go to the union membership for ratification and then to the board for a formal vote.

Snyder said he expected those final approvals to be formalities, and was happy to see the negotiations come to a close. The past three years of negotiations brought rallies at board meetings and back to school nights, job actions that halted extracurricular activities, a lawsuit against the union for denying seniors college recommendation letters and many tense board of education meetings.

In April, Snyder said it was important the union and board put the past behind them.

"We're all going forward together," he said then. "We're going to be very supportive of the union going forward and I believe they'll be supportive of the board."